Seth recently wrote a post called The non-optimized life.

If you haven’t seen his blog, you wouldn’t call it optimized by any stretch of the imagination. He rarely posts a picture, and when he does it is only to illustrate his point.

He doesn’t allow comments and he doesn’t use excessive links.

He’s a busy man, and it’s a wonder that he blogs at all, let alone daily.

He uses social networking in ways that maximizes his exposure without wasting his time.

This highly successful marketer/business man/author has taught this Daddy Blogger something very important:

I like to think that I’ve optimized my life by using Twitter to update my Facebook, or using Social Oomph to broadcast that I’ve written a new post every two hours on the day it’s posted.

But I still write all of those posts. Each message, even at 140 characters or less, represent time. Time I could have spent with my wife and kids. Time I could have been using improving myself.

My wife and I have discussed these ideas since I began this blog a year and a half ago. I’ve justified that time countless ways. It increases traffic, I’m making friends, it benefits my writing by helping me write quickly and directly.

As life moves forward, I see these justifications less as explanations and more as excuses. Actually, not just as excuses, but procrastination from doing the real work. The real work of finding myself and my family living lives that we can all be proud of.

Blogging and tweeting will slow, but the quality bar will be raised. If you enjoy what you see here, please subscribe to my RSS feed, because I won’t be telling you every two hours that I’ve blogged. Hopefully, I’ll find a voice worth listening to, and like Seth Godin, optimization (i.e. begging you to read me) will no longer be necessary.

You’ll just want to be here.

I’m about to hit ‘publish’ on this post at 11:00 pm on the Saturday night before the final game of the World Cup. I’d say when it comes to non-optimization, I’m off to a great start!

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Blogging.

Why? What’s so important that I feel I should set my alarm and get ready for work early so that I can sit at the computer and write about my family and my life?

I find it soothing. It relaxes me. If I don’t get to do this, I feel like I might explode.

Crazy, huh?

But the other day I found a bit of insight in an essay by Ray Bradbury:

‘I have learned, on my journeys, that if I let a day go by without writing, I grow uneasy. Two days and I am in tremor. Three and I suspect lunacy. Four and I might as well be a hog, suffering the flux in a wallow. An hour’s writing is tonic. I’m on my feet, running in circles, and yelling for a clean pair of spats.’

The quote is from a book I just started reading by Bradbury entitled ‘Zen in the Art of Writing‘.

Darn it, Bradbury’s right.

A lot of my readers are fellow writers and bloggers, so the above probably comes as no surprise to you. Late at night something awakes you, and you feel that hot, burning sensation rise from the base of your neck to the back of your head. That Thing under the bed that compels you to get up and jot something down or fling open your laptop.

Maybe it happens in the middle of the day, when you’re in the middle of some menial chore. That little voice that creeps in to your consciousness and whispers, ‘Have I got a story for you…’

The zen in blogging is that there is a certain freedom to having your own space to create and be discovered. You not only get to exorcise whatever demons may be plaguing you, or share your triumphs, or simply rant about things that you love and despise, but you also join a community. You find kindred spirits who actually enjoy looking at pictures of your goofy kids! We as bloggers, see in other bloggers a bit of ourselves. But we also quickly learn that in our similarities we are each unique individuals, with our own gifts to share.

Blogging is about creating something, but it’s also about sharing, writing to be read, and in many cases, reading to be read. I don’t know that anything else with this much power has existed before in the history of mankind. No one is telling you not to, more often than not, you’ll find encouragement. There’s no publisher telling you you’re not good enough. If a post isn’t good enough, it’s up to you to click ‘publish’.

You’ll learn from the feedback whether you were received well. If not, do you care? What are your goals for your blog? Are you trying to make money? Then maybe you should care about your audience. Are you just having fun? Then you’re getting the most out of this crazy fun hobby, and the audience doesn’t matter. If you keep honing your skills, they’ll catch up…

I’d like to leave you today with one final thought from Mr. Bradbury:

‘Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me.

After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.

Now, it’s your turn. Jump!’

See you in the blogosphere…

image from squidoo.com

OK, so maybe this post is a little late. As you continue to read, you’ll understand why…

Happy 2010!!! You geeks out there that read this blog know that this is ‘The Year We Make Contact‘!!! Start striking your timpani drums now! So, my first resolution this year is to make friends with some Russians and go to Jupiter to look for monoliths…

All geeking out aside, I have been taking a lot of time to reflect on where I am as a husband, father, employee, and of course, Daddy Blogger. Since you are reading my blog, I am going to focus first on what I will be doing here going forward in this brand-spanking new year, and why you should keep reading!

Howefitz Blog New Year Resolutions and Hopes For The Future

• Deliver more quality content, maybe less quantity
  • Last year, I set a goal of blogging every other day. I failed. Of course, the reason for that is that I have a real full time job and a family. Some days sleep seems appropriate, and then it’s time to work or take care of the family. So I’m going easy on myself this year:
  • Generally, it seems I get about an hour in the morning to blog. This has resulted in a few rushed, phoned-in entries. So going forward, I am going to try to seek out better information, and really think through what I’m writing. I know a lot of my regular readers have become like friends, and for that I am eternally grateful. But I would still like to see this base grow, and to do that I need to take the time to research and do my best to provide quality content. Therefore, I may not blog but once, maybe twice, a week. Of course, these will still include funny anecdotes from my wife and children, but there will also be genuinely helpful (I hope) articles that others can find interesting beyond my friends and family.
• What About ‘Kids Play On The Net’?
  • My ‘weekly’ column, ‘Kids Play On The Net‘ over at Dad-Blogs will continue, probably in the same sporadic rhythm as last year, but you have my solemn oath that when I post there, it will continue to be about websites and online resources that I genuinely use on a regular basis and I hope you will find them helpful as well.

Beyond my hopes for creating a more resourceful, thoughtful, useful blog, I have personal goals as well:

• The Ever Popular ‘I’m Going to Lose Weight’
  • Our big family gift for Christmas this year was a Wii, with a Wii Fit. The first body test I took with it called me obese. A little voice said (Out loud!) ‘That’s obese!’ And my Mii character looked down at it’s ballooning form as if I had cursed it to a life of unhealthy plumpness. So, I will definitely start really watching what I eat. I considered going back to Tim Ferriss‘s ‘Slow Carb Diet‘, but I’m easily bored, so I will settle for avoiding ‘white foods’ and extra snacks. But the one day of eating anything I want? I could still get behind that!
  • And of course, I’ll be exercising with my Nintendo. (Welcome to the future. Oh the times, they are a-changin’!)
• Heaven Help Me, I Will Get Promoted
  • This past year I did a lot of complaining here, at work, and at home, about my job. The past several years I’ve felt like I’ve slipped and lost hold of something that I used to be very good at. I’ve heard a lot of complaining from others as well, and my response is always the same: ‘I hear a lot of problems, but not too many solutions’. A quick glance in the mirror made me realize what a hypocrite I was being. Here I was complaining and not solving anything myself! So, in this bright new year, if I find myself wanting to complain, I’m going to redirect that energy into finding and implementing solutions. And then if someone happens to notice what an improved manager I’ve become and thinks I should be doing more…

• Be A Better Father
  • Living in the Rocky Mountains is tough in the winter time. I feel like my kids don’t get a lot of varied experience due to being inside all the time. However, I am making a vow to get out to more story times at the library, visit the children’s museum more, and, of course, teach them the proper way to have a snowball fight (if I can ever get the stuff up here to pack well enough…).
• Be A Better Husband
  • Having kids, it’s easy to neglect the marriage. Your spouse is relegated to an extra pair of arms and hands to get things done, and an extra set of eyes to watch the kids and make sure one isn’t beaming the other in the head with a Linky-Doo.
  • This year, I’m going to make sure I pay attention to adding more romance into my marriage. After all, that’s how this whole family business got started in the first place…

How about yourselves? Any plans for 2010? 2009 was a good year, 2010 will be great!!!

This post brought to you by Dad-Blogs' FatherHood Friday. Be sure to swing by for all the other great Dads and Moms who love to share their lives online!

I’m not going to lie. I started this blog to try to make money.

A year ago, I discovered guys like John Chow and Shoemoney. I saw sites like Problogger and thought, ‘Man, I could do that! Let me at it!’

A year ago this month I started the Howefitz blog, and I have not made one cent. In fact, I’ve lost a few. (I’m lookin at you, aweber!)

But the fact remains that my blogging intensity has increased during the course of the year, and I have no intentions of stopping, because this is fun!

If you go back to the beginnings of this blog (and I highly recommend that you do NOT) you will see that I had no direction. I was looking for ways to build readers and make CASH! I was reading all the pros tell me to build networks and find other bloggers and SEO and blahblahblah.

Who wouldn't want to blog moments like these?

My wife kept saying, ‘Well, it looks like the guys that are making money on the internet are blogging about how to make money on the internet.’

Right. And you should always write what you know. And I (obviously) do not know how to make money on the internet.

Then, as these things go, I discovered dad-o-matic, and then dad-blogs.

(Sound of needle being yanked off a record) Wait. Wait one minute. There are dads. Dads on the internet. Dads on the internet blogging about their families.

…

And…

…they were interesting!

These weren’t boring home movies of someone else’s vacation or their kids taking their first step, this was all about the emotions of having a family. This was about supporting each other and giving each other advice.

All kinds of dads: stay at home dads, gay dads, married dads, single dads, divorced dads…

All these dads were rising to the challenge of trying to put into words their thoughts and feelings about being a dad and all the challenges that come with it!

I sat back in my chair and exhaled. This was something I could talk about! You never run out of material from your family! There’s always somebody saying or doing something funny or heart warming! I love being a dad! I can do that!

So I haven’t made a dime. As you can see, the google ads are gone, there’s very little in the way of advertising here. I occasionally review a book or movie and try to hock it through my amazon associate account, but nobody ever buys.

What I’ve earned through this blog is more important than any monetary gain. It’s become a writing exercise. It’s become a way for me to put words and thoughts together, sometimes coherently, in a way to elicit an emotional response from others. But mostly, it’s made me a lot of friends.

Ron Mattocks, author of the blog Clark Kent’s Lunchbox and the upcoming book Sugar Milk said it best recently:

The thing about blogging that makes it so different from just writing is that it’s about community, and community requires interaction. … The blogging community has become very real to me, almost as real as calling up people that are physically in my area, and meeting them for lunch; in some cases I interact with blogging buddies more than my own extended family.

That community is what has made me not only blog my heart out whenever possible, (Mainly when everyone else is asleep, like right now…) but what has also inspired me to write the sporadic column ‘Kids Play On The Net‘ at Dad-Blogs, among other unpaid projects I have in mind.

Plus, I absolutely love having a venue where I can show that I have the Greatest Family On The Planet™.

So, I would like to thank you all for the continued support, and hope that you like hearing about my life as much as I enjoy living and sharing it!

Here (in no particular order) are some friends I’ve made through blogging and their blogs:

Eric Bolton of Juggling Eric and Marvel Off the Clock

PJ Mullen of Real Men Drive Minivans

Apok of Knee Deep In Kids

Mocha Dad

Ron Mattocks of Clark Kent’s Lunchbox

Ciara of Ciara’s Ramblings and Whatnot

Weasel Momma of World of Weasels

Dad Unmasked

Melisa with one S of Suburban Scrawl

Jason of The Devoted Dad

Kevin W. Grossman of Get Off The Ground

Surprised Mom

Bella Daddy

Mr. Man of Dear Mr. Man

Thanks a lot guys, I’m just reeling this list off the top of my head, if I missed you, hopefully you’re on my blogroll on the sidebar. If not, let me know!

***Sidenote***

Today is the last chance to enter my Paying Forward A Random Act Of Kindness Giveaway! For details, simply click the link!

In Christopher Moore‘s hilarious book, ‘A Dirty Job‘, his main character is a ‘beta male’. Moore describes a beta male as the guy that wasn’t all that popular in high school that, when something does go his way, he feels like it will be snatched away at any moment. The beta male’s imagination is constantly shifting to the worst case scenario.

I’m pretty sure that I am a beta male, and I have a pretty active imagination.

That’s why, on Wednesday, when I posted the ‘Super Dad and His Amazing Family’ edition of Wordless Wednesday, I took it pretty hard when Weasel Momma called me to the mat about a couple of pictures of my five week old son sleeping. In one, he is sleeping next to his three year old sister, in another, he is on his side, nestled in a blanket. Both pictures are abso-friggin-lutely adorable.

I think Weasel Momma agreed, but she utilized the comments on my blog and twitter to tell me of the dangers of allowing a baby to sleep on an adult bed with other kids. She reminded me that the best place for a baby to sleep is in a crib without bumpers or blankets or soft toys.

Of course, I knew that. I read the magazines at the doctor’s office. I do searches on WebMD. I almost fired back ‘He’s in the crib MOST of the time! Do you think I’m stupid?’ I wanted to ask what business it was of hers. But then I stopped and thought. I’m the one that puts my life out on my blog for the world to see. So far I’ve been fortunate enough to find kindred spirits that give me lots of encouragement and kind words.

Weasel Momma is one of those kind folks. The reason she cares, the reason she stuck her nose in at all, is that she is a SIDS mom. At this realization, my view began to shift. What would I do in that situation? I could only imagine. And as I mentioned before, my imagination gets pretty vivid…

Weasel Momma, I commend you. It takes courage to put these experiences out there. It takes courage to stand up and say something when you see that something’s not right. I thank you for your advice and look forward to more in the future. I also would like to apologize for any trauma I may have caused, inadvertently drudging up those memories…

Tristin, I apologize to you for not making sure that you are 100% safe at all times. Your mom and I would go straight out of our heads if anything were to happen to you.

When my wife breast feeds, she often lays down with him, and if he drifts off to sleep, we leave him there, thinking that because it’s during the day, and we’re being attentive, that it should be okay. Because Calli loves her baby brother, sometimes she wants to snuggle him.

At night, we’ve been kind of putting up with the bassinet, looking at cribs half-heartedly, but not with much sense of urgency.

Yesterday, I ordered a crib. It does not have a drop-side, adding stability and no pinch points! I’m not kidding, this changed my life.

Hoo!

I promised I’d lighten things up, so here’s a couple more snippets:

It occured to me that I did a lot of complaining on this blog in the past. I bitch about my job, my living situation, … but it occured to me that I hardly ever give resolution! Which, of course, goes against what I wanted when I started this blog. I want people to think that I am the perfect father and provider. I want people to weep when they read this blog, because I am so much better than them!  ;)  Alas, I am a beta male, and I have problems just like every one else…

The job is getting better. I have this weekend off, and I start my three days on, three days off schedule on Monday. They promise no more extra days, no more extra long days. I am completely optimistic about this, it will be amazing!

I mentioned it on twitter, but never blogged about my new digs. We were living in a two bedroom apartment and panicked about trying to fit a family of five into it. The week before Tristin was born, we moved into a three bedroom two and a half bath duplex with it’s OWN WASHER AND DRYER and a two car garage. There’s a lot of storage and a fireplace, and it actually feels like someplace I can LIVE!

On the online life front, I’ve started a protected twitter account that I will have more control over. If you would like to add to the conversation and not sell me stuff, (i.e. if you’re from dad-blogs) follow me @JustinMHowe, and I’ll follow back. If you want to show me how amazing it is to shove advertising down people’s throats on twitter and facebook, I’m blocking your ass.

Thanks so much for listening, I’ll be a lot more jovial in the posts ahead!

Yesterday I was selling iPhones at work and striking up conversations with the customers. One couple had a one year old with them. He just kept giving me this huge, toothy grin. At least, it would have been toothy if he had more than four teeth! I just couldn’t stop looking at his giggling little self, so I said, “You look awfully happy! Is this going to be your new toy?”

“Noooooooo.” the father quickly replied.

“It won’t be long.” I said. “Leap Frog makes a baby blackberry.” (They do. Check it out!)

We then had a conversation about the dangers of the internet, and more importantly, how you can become anyone you want to be on the internet.

Now, for the most part I think I do pretty well with just being myself online. I’m pretty much the same boring, run-of-the-mill person I’d be of we met face to face.

But for some reason, I feel the need to show off my online life and how I use different apps to achieve excellent daddy blogger status. Any suggestions on how to streamline this process would be greatly appreciated!

Obviously, I write this blog. When I post a new entry, I head over to ping.fm and announce it, which automatically updates my twitter, facebook, and MySpace to let everyone who cares and some who don’t that I just blogged today.

I also write ‘Kids Play On The Net‘. This is a weekly column about kid-friendly websites for education and entertainment over at dad-blogs.com. I can’t pimp that site enough. It’s truly a great place for dads and moms to hang out. When they post my column, it’s back to ping to let everyone know.

MySpace is dead to me. The only thing I do over there is look every once in a while to see if ping updated it. MySpace is targeted at teens, and as far as I’m concerned, they can have it. I still have a couple of friends over there that haven’t come into the light of facebook, so I still have a profile there. Meh.

Facebook is crazy. Not only have I reunited with long-lost friends there, but I’ve also had conversations with writers and artists and people I admire. These are people I’d just stammer at in public. But on facebook it’s just easier. OK, so maybe I am a little different online.

Twitter. What have I not already said about twitter on this blog? Twitter has truly become an addiction. I check it constantly on my phone. I enjoy ‘live tweeting’ my days off and family activities. I enjoy it so much that I created a daily segment on this blog through twitter tools called ‘Twitter Tittelations’ that gives you my daily tweets in digest form. Daily. Is that annoying? Let me know! I thought it was a great way to post daily without typing an entire post, but I may just be fooling myself.

I also have friendfeed, stumbleupon, technorati, and digg accounts, but I still haven’t devoted enough time to those to figure out how to use them.

That’s it in a nutshell: the tools that this daddy blogger uses. Any more I should get into? What do you use?

Kat, age 1 1/2

As I begin to write this, it’s just after 4 am in the Rocky Mountains. My beautiful wife and two children are still asleep. I’m awake on purpose. I set my alarm for this time. This is my favorite blogging hour. Some days, I miss this hour. I hit the snooze alarm a few too many times, or I do get up and get sidetracked by checking email, my twitter followers, Facebook, and MySpace. But today is special. According to Dad Blogs, today is fatherhood Friday.

This is the first fatherhood Friday I’ve had the pleasure to be a part of. I know it will be the first of many. Since this is my first, I really gave some thought to what I would say today. I have not yet read any other blogger’s previous posts for fatherhood Fridays because I wanted to strike out there and make this my own. I’m sure when I’m done with my post today, I’ll explore and see what others have written to see if I even come close to the mark of what others feel and want to see in these blog entries. 

I thought about trying to take one aspect of fatherhood and exploring that, but I think instead I’ll give you an overall picture of what my life as a father has meant to me.

I crowded my way in to Kat’s life when she was only four. I had met her mother, Bobbette, in an art class and within a week we were finishing each other’s sentences. As a single mother, naturally, Bobbette was cautious about who she let into her home. She didn’t want Kat feeling as though men came and went through their lives. Eventually though, I was allowed to come over. At night. After Kat was asleep. 

Bobbette and I were snuggling on the couch, watching a movie neither one of us truly cared about. Without any advance signal, a little toy car rolled across the floor from the direction of Kat’s room. I remember little Kat stumbling out of her room, big green eyes wide with curiosity. Bobbette picked her up and carried her back in to her room. I remember that little cherub face watching me as it was carried back to bed. I already loved her mother at first sight. Could that truly happen twice? I was terrified.

Bobbette’s almost five years older than me. She had Kat when she was twenty, which means that I was fifteen when Kat was born. The same age she is today. At twenty, what did I know about being a parent? I was too in love with Bobbette to run away, and now I had seen the daughter that people had ‘warned’ me about when I first starting looking at Bobbette with longing. I had no clue what I was doing, but now  I realize that no parent does!

Calli, born perfect!

I was so full of fear. I was afraid that I couldn’t support a family. I was afraid I wasn’t the right father for Kat, thinking that I probably acted more like a brother than a father (Something she’s admitted since), because I still felt like a kid myself. A friend of mine who grew up in a home with a step-father who acted more like a brother once told me, “Those are the best kind. Trust me.” I hope so.

We ‘settled down’ together by actually gaining the certificate that says the law officially recognizes what I already knew: that I would spend the rest of my life with these two young ladies. And eventually, along came Calli. 

Calli was the apple of my eye before she was even born. While she was still inside the womb, when her mother and I would cuddle in bed, we could feel her gently caressing us. We knew she would be a loving soul, and she is. She gives the biggest and best hugs. She can also wrestle harder and longer than any little boy I’ve ever met. Her laugh will bring a smile to any broken heart or solemn face she comes in contact with. She’s the light of my life.

They all are, mother and daughters, the whole of my universe. And I’m not stopping there! As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I have a third child on the way. I’m just as terrified today as I was when I first saw those big green eyes staring at me over her mother’s shoulder. But I’m also fascinated, and amazed, and excited beyond words. The things we will all share with eachother, the places we’ll go…

I would not miss this ride for anything…

Kat and Calli sort through their Halloween haul!

As a Daddy Blogger, I’ve gotten frustrated lately that it’s fairly hard to find fellow Daddy Bloggers. Every few months or so I Google ‘Daddy Blogs‘ for something interesting. Today I hit the mother, er, fatherload:

I found dad-blogs.com.

Dad-blogs.com is an online community designed for and by bloggers who happen to be fathers. I really enjoy this site and am proud to be a member of it. I can really see the potential for dad-blogs to become THE central hub for daddy bloggers online. In just a couple of months, they’ve already attracted the likes of Wayne Parker, daddy blogger from about.com, so you know they’re gaining clout!

I’ve enjoyed exploring this site today.  The Comments section says ‘Write a Comment Slacker’. The $100 giveaway that’s going on right now is advertised by saying, ‘Win beer money!’ In other words, the target audience is definitely men! Women are allowed in too because, let’s face it, someone has to keep us in line!

There are plenty of activities to keep you busy such as a forum and groups to join or create if you want to dig in to a topic a little deeper. They just introduced a feature called ‘DB Investigates’, where they ‘take a hard look at a subject matter from all angles in order to spark debate and find solutions to a wide range of topics.’ Up first for the month of March? Well, we are men, so we’re talking about sex. (I’ll take bets right now on whether or not that’s the topic for next month too! )

If you’re a daddy blogger looking for a place to share ideas, or just a daddy looking for advice and a sympathetic ear, dad-blogs.com is the place for you!